The Price of Motherhood
   Ann Crittenden
  2001 Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co. NY
   ISBN: 0805066187


Why Motherhood is the Most Important, and Least Valued, Job in America. Drawn from hundreds of interviews & years of research in child development, history, law & economics the case is argued for the most dependent, under-rated & least protected laborers in this society.

The costs of motherhood are apparent everywhere: college-educated women pay a “mommy tax” in lost income when they have a child; family law deprives mothers of financial equality within marriage; childcare & elder care(essentially female fields of work) are not figured into the GNP; at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force & social security simple ignores mothers & housewives - at best offering them half of their husbands' pensions in old age.

This award-winning economics journalist has written with passion & clarity, demonstrating that proper recognition & economic rewards for motherhood would, contrary to popular belief, actually contribute & enhance the welfare of all.

As Theodore Roosevelt is quoted as writing: “The good mother, the wise mother...is more important to the community than even the ablest man; her career is more worthy of honor and is more useful to the community than the career of any man, no matter how successful.”

Having said that, Ann Crittenden proceeds to take us behind our front doors into our homes & our marriages, where a conspiracy of silence has “disappeared” entire generations of working women. After all don't most of us think women “do” the work of wives & mothers for the love of it? Isn't motherhood & wifedom done out of love & we all know that love is its own reward?

Don't Wall Street traders, baseball players & factory mechanics love their work? How are their just rewards counted & paid for? Who runs the homes of these workers?

When a woman marries, she disappears; first her name is gone & then, if she has children & stays home to raise them, her earnings are gone. Her social security account gets not one cent more no matter how little nor how much her husband earns. She has no employment record nor unemployment compensation; she has no health care program in her own right nor do the children.

Ann Crittenden raises the old Feminist specter of marriage as an economic partnership. We groan at the old saw yet to this day, most every state in the Union still operates from laws that preclude wives & mothers from having a financial say or safety in their marriages.

“Not again!” I hear you mutter, “Another Feminist ranting & raving about how downtrodden are women who choose to become wives, who choose to become mothers.” Well they are, legally & financially! What price motherhood? Dare we count the cost?

Sit for a while & make out a list of all the tasks mothers perform: from pre-dawn to post-dusk & don't forget the midnight medical calls! A mother is on duty 24x7x365 with no coffee breaks nor commute time to decompress. Remember when the children are napping or sleeping, mothers are still working to keep the home running. Yet absolutely no economic value is placed on this labor, because it is considered a labor of love & everyone knows love is given freely.

Only when the institution of marriage breaks down for whatever reason: domestic violence, the husband's abandonment or death or his loss of work, does a mother's worth enter into her State's & her Nation's economic purview - for then she becomes a Welfare Mom to whom must be paid the stipend allotted by lawmakers - always far less than the lawmakers make themselves!

With chapters entitled: The Invention of the Unproductive Housewife; The Mommy Tax; The Dark Little Secret of Family Life; What Is A Wife Worth?; Who Really Owns the Family Wage?; Who Pays for the Kids?; The Welfare State Versus a Caring State; The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love; An Accident Waiting to Happen & It Was Her Choice, Ann Crittenden takes us through the maze of innuendo, law, history & prejudice that plague women who become full time wives & mothers & casts them as economic untouchables.

The Price of Motherhood is one tough read! Educational, emotional & exciting! In What Is A Wife Worth? Crittenden recounts the headliner divorce case of Wendt vs Wendt. Not just a case of a husband worth millions & a woman who learned how to spend them, it is an alarming expose of how millions of women work side-by-side with their husbands, supporting them in the beginning until they begin to make enough to support them both; that divorce case shed light on the value & legality of the partnership of marriage - both emotional & economic.

In Replacing the Welfare State with a Caring State, this author has drawn on laws in other countries to posit for our society, some easily enacted changes to our Social Security System. She offers ideas on work-related insurance for all our workers; on providing universal preschool; on ceasing to tax mothers more than richt men; on social security & health coverage for all our children & their careworkers; on two-tier marriages; on equal income sharing & expanding the concept of diversity to include people with caregiving experience.

There is also a detailed Notes section citing the writer's sources which in & of themselves make for curious & interesting reading.

All-in-all, The Price of Motherhood is a profound & enlightening evaluation of where we still are in the state of the union we call marriage & how our society views it from both legal & economic (which are inseparable) standpoints.

A very good read & one I hope everyone contemplating marriage & parenthood would read to see how they, in their private relationship, can balance the books so that both partners & parents are of equal value, to themselves & their society.

Do check out my Interview with Ann Crittenden - an interviewer's dream: she takes the questions & runs!

Her earlier effort is: Killing the Sacred Cows: Bold Ideas for a New Economy.
(03/04/01)

Rebecca